How to use Showdown to process Markdown

Markdown is a popular text formatting syntax that allows you to easily write and read plain text documents, while still being able to include rich formatting and multimedia content. It is often used for creating documentation, writing blog posts, and creating content for the web.

One tool that can be used to work with Markdown in JavaScript is Showdown, a lightweight Markdown parser and converter. Showdown allows you to parse Markdown text and convert it to HTML, as well as convert HTML back to Markdown.

To get started with Showdown, you'll need to include the library in your project. You can either download the library and include it as a local file, or you can include it from a CDN by adding the following script tag to your HTML:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/showdown@1.9.1/dist/showdown.min.js"></script>

Once you have Showdown included in your project, you can use it to parse and convert Markdown. To parse Markdown text and convert it to HTML, you can use the Showdown.converter function. This function takes a string of Markdown text as input and returns a string of HTML.

Here's an example of how to use Showdown to convert Markdown to HTML:

var markdown = '# Hello, world!\nThis is a test of **Showdown**'; 
var html = Showdown.converter.makeHtml(markdown);

The resulting HTML string would look like this:

<h1>Hello, world!</h1> 
<p>This is a test of <strong>Showdown</strong></p>

You can then insert the HTML into your web page by setting the innerHTML of an element, like this:

document.getElementById('content').innerHTML = html;

Showdown also supports converting HTML back to Markdown. To do this, you can use the Showdown.converter.makeMarkdown function, which takes an HTML string as input and returns a Markdown string.

Here's an example of how to use Showdown to convert HTML back to Markdown:

var html = '<h1>Hello, world!</h1><p>This is a test of <strong>Showdown</strong></p>'; 
var markdown = Showdown.converter.makeMarkdown(html);

The resulting Markdown string would look like this:

# Hello, world! This is a test of **Showdown**

Showdown also offers a variety of options for customizing the parsing and conversion process. For example, you can use the extensions option to enable additional features, such as tables or definition lists. You can also use the flavor option to specify a different flavor of Markdown, such as GitHub-flavored Markdown.

Here's an example of how to use the extensions and flavor options:

var converter = new Showdown.converter({   extensions: ['tables', 'definition-lists'],   flavor: 'github' });  
var markdown = '# Hello, world!\nThis is a test of **Showdown**'; 
var html = converter.makeHtml(markdown);

In addition to the options available for parsingand converting Markdown, Showdown also offers a variety of utility functions for working with Markdown text. For example, the Showdown.helper.replaceRecursiveRegExp function can be used to perform search and replace operations on Markdown text, while the Showdown.helper.encodeCode function can be used to encode special characters in code blocks.

Here's an example of how to use the Showdown.helper.replaceRecursiveRegExp function:

var markdown = '# Hello, world!\nThis is a test of **Showdown**';  
markdown = Showdown.helper.replaceRecursiveRegExp(markdown, '**', '*', 'g');  
// The resulting Markdown string would look like this: 
// "# Hello, world!\nThis is a test of *Showdown*"

And here's an example of how to use the Showdown.helper.encodeCode function:

var code = '<h1>Hello, world!</h1>';  
code = Showdown.helper.encodeCode(code);  
// The resulting code string would look like this: 
// "&lt;h1&gt;Hello, world!&lt;/h1&gt;"

In conclusion, Showdown is a useful tool for working with Markdown in JavaScript. Whether you need to parse and convert Markdown text, or perform search and replace operations or encoding on Markdown text, Showdown has you covered. With its wide range of options for customizing the parsing and conversion process, and its various utility functions, it is a great tool for working with Markdown in your web applications.